


Watson rushes to Holmes's bedside – at any time and wherever he is

by Sherloki1854



Series: Johnlock in the original canon [15]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Analysis, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Meta, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Freeform, Subtext
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 16:37:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4712900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherloki1854/pseuds/Sherloki1854
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And afterwards he seems quite happy to continue dropping everything and taking Holmes on holidays in the name of Holmes's health. Right. But I already talked about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watson rushes to Holmes's bedside – at any time and wherever he is

The Reigate Puzzle, 1887

_On referring to my notes I see that it was upon the 14th of April that I received a telegram from Lyons which informed me that Holmes was lying ill in the Hotel Dulong. Within twenty-four hours I was in his sick-room_

 

The Dying Detective, 1890

“ _He’s dying, Dr. Watson,” said [Mrs Hudson]. “For three days he has been sinking, and I doubt if he will last the day. He would not let me get a doctor. This morning when I saw his bones sticking out of his face and his great bright eyes looking at me I could stand no more of it. ‘With your leave or without it, Mr. Holmes, I am going for a doctor this very hour,’ said I. ‘Let it be Watson, then,’ said he. I wouldn’t waste an hour in coming to him, sir, or you may not see him alive.”_

_I was horrified for I had heard nothing of his illness. I need not say that I rushed for my coat and my hat [...]_

_He was indeed a deplorable spectacle. In the dim light of a foggy November day the sick room was a gloomy spot, but it was that gaunt, wasted face staring at me from the bed which sent a chill to my heart. His eyes had the brightness of fever, there was a hectic flush upon either cheek, and dark crusts clung to his lips; the thin hands upon the coverlet twitched incessantly, his voice was croaking and spasmodic. He lay listlessly as I entered the room, but the sight of me brought a gleam of recognition to his eyes._

 

The Final Problem, 1891

“ _Then it makes it the easier for me to propose that you should come away with me for a week to the Continent.”_

“ _Where?”_

“ _Oh, anywhere. It’s all the same to me.”_

_There was something very strange in all this. It was not Holmes’s nature to take an aimless holiday, and something about his pale, worn face told me that his nerves were at their highest tension. He saw the question in my eyes, and, putting his finger-tips together and his elbows upon his knees, he explained the situation._

_Watson is married, but his wife is visiting somebody (what a coincidence, really – again?). Holmes turns up, looking “pale, worn”, and Watson immediately agrees to go someplace unspecified. Uh._

 

The Devil’s Foot, 1897

_It was, then, in the spring of the year 1897 that Holmes’s iron constitution showed some symptoms of giving way in the face of constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps, by occasional indiscretions of his own. In March of that year Dr. Moore Agar, of Harley Street, whose dramatic introduction to Holmes I may someday recount, gave positive injunctions that the famous private agent lay aside all his cases and surrender himself to complete rest if he wished to avert an absolute breakdown. The state of his health was not a matter in which he himself took the faintest interest, for his mental detachment was absolute, but he was induced at last, on the threat of being permanently disqualified from work, to give himself a complete change of scene and air. Thus it was that in the early spring of that year we found ourselves together in a small cottage near Poldhu Bay, at the further extremity of the Cornish peninsula._

 

And he does just run off without telling his wife or caring about her in the least. Which, yet again, raises the issue of the wife's existence.

 

 

 


End file.
